CHIPPENHAM, AND STOCKPORT, UK — Wiltshire is the England of crop circles, those mysterious, alien patterns flattened into summer corn. It is also the England of RAF bases, bronze-age megaliths, and Liberal Democrats.

I am on the hunt for Nick Clegg.

The leader of the Liberal Democrats and, perhaps for only a few more days, the deputy prime minister, is being seen as a walking political corpse. The latest polling suggests both that he will lose his own seat and that his party will not be kingmakers in a “hung parliament”.

This man has been loved and loathed by England.

At the last elections, in May 2010, Clegg’s party got 23 percent of the vote. But by taking what his voters thought was a leftish party into a Tory-led coalition, he is now widely reviled by millions of those who voted for him. In coalition, Clegg broke a promise not to increase university fees. This cost the party most of its youthful, student activist base.

The Liberal Democrats — universally nicknamed “Lib-Dems” — are now polling around 9 percent. They are set to lose half their seats and come fourth behind the insurgent Scottish National Party.

This is why Nick Clegg is campaigning across the country in his “battle bus.”

Or not quite.

I drive into Chippenham.

This is a small town washed in gentle, spring sun. The car glides through mellow, contented streets and mini-roundabouts planted with daffodils. I pass fluttering Indian, British and Bangladeshi flags outside Tale of Spice: Executive Indian Cuisine as I hunt down the “Lib-Dem” battle bus.

Clegg’s party is fighting to hold Chippenham from the Tories. This is why their leader has come to a prospering country town to launch a policy for universal free primary schools meals aimed at deprived inner cities.

Today he is visiting a school. No members of the public will be allowed in. And no members of the public have been informed he is coming to town. Not even most of the teachers, let alone the support staff, just in case. This is now standard for leaders’ campaigns in all parties.

I walk into Ivy Lane Primary School, a redbrick built with all the affection of a stiff kiss.

Party officials have told me the only way to interview Nick Clegg is to pay them £750 to be in the controlled pool on his bus. I am determined to prove them wrong.

***

British political campaigns take place on TV, not in real life.

This is what I learn in the playground.

“Where’s the talent,” shouts a producer.

Seven cameras are lined up.

British campaigning never leaves the bubble.

A crowd of resigned, polite, tired journalists linger in the playground, as officious Lib-Dems come up, and position the pack at the end of the playground. The Lib-Dems make it clear the pack cannot cross an invisible two-thirds line across the playground. They come up with badges and clipboards, firmly suggesting the journalists move back, back again, to the line.

The scene is set. The camera angle is perfect. It has taken thirty minutes to get right. And then the models appear.

Clegg and his glamorous Spanish wife Miriam González Durántez, the star-struck headmaster, and two carefully selected school children, saunter past.

“No, you can’t follow him.”

The scene is over in three seconds. To the millions watching the election at home it will look like Nick Clegg casually walked into a school.

A Lib-Dem shouts.

“Now follow me into the canteen for the cake.”

The pack is positioned into the canteen. They are requested to stand firmly within lines demarcated with yellow tape on the floor. They oblige. Seven TV cameras, two microphone balls, and some twenty journalists crowd inside.

We are waiting for Clegg to make apple crumble.

The dinner ladies behind the counter are trembling. The Westminster press is locking its angles on them. I slide up to talk to them. The Lib-Dems look most displeased.

“She may not know she’s speaking to a journalist so can you please stop speaking to her please.”

“No,” I reply. “She’s got a dozen cameras in her face and I just told her who I was.”

The Lib-Dem scowls and stands besides me.

“I feel like I’m in a zoo,” says the dinner lady who, made nervous by the Lib-Dems, dashes back.

I try to speak two table washers. Are you voting Lib-Dem?

“I’d rather not talk,” says one, noticing the party official coming up behind me. “I’m a Conservative.” Her eyes lift into the cameras.

The table washers become tense and withdraw. Five, ten, fifteen minutes pass. Then the cameras chatter frantically. Clegg glides like a celeb behind the counter.

For less than seven minutes he tosses around some ingredients in a bowl, next to his wife, and smiles like he has been doing this all morning for the cameras.

The shoot complete, Clegg leaves the dinner ladies and vanishes into a side-room.

Tonight TV clips will give the impression Clegg made this apple crumble. The local paper will run this headline: “Nick Clegg whips up a crumble at Chippenham School.” And the pro-coalition government Daily Mail will report Clegg “served lunch.”

This is not what happened.

The deputy prime minister reappears. The five-year-olds are trouped in. Clegg does not serve them food. He stands to greet their teacher. My eyes fix on the subtle microphone, on his lapel. We are all pretending this canteen scene is real — that the room is not half full with a snapping, jostling, pack — and that these tots are just casually having lunch.

This is not a campaign: this is a fake TV ritual.

A very pretty little girl is chosen to go up to the trembling dinner ladies with Clegg. Cameras clack. Zooms focus. I stare, squinting, at the deputy prime minister’s face. Clegg grins, forcing it with gritted teeth, till his cheeks are almost forced out at the blonde little girl. Then, for an instant, he glances at the window, and as he blinks, the politician’s grin releases.

The crumble is now being served. But the deputy prime minister bends down and rubs his hands on the little girl’s tummy as he smiles as hard as he can. Clegg then moves to the stunned dinner ladies, their eyes as wide as owls’. They shiver as the cameras click furiously.

The politician’s face is flickering: for a moment or two he looks sincere — but then something distant and somber swallows his face; he frowns, dark and worried, as he mechanically asks the little girl: “Do you like Brussels sprouts?”

Clegg sits down with the five-year-olds. The black, tendril-like camera equipment thrusts as close to the gobbling little tots as it can. His face still flickers. Miriam, his wife, shoots him a glance that says “I’m with you.” Then, after less than ten minutes, he leaves.

Picture: Ben Judah

The officials hold back the pack.

The children eat, eerily oblivious.

A few of us are escorted into the classroom. Cut out teddy bears are stuck to the wall. A picture alphabet is stuck to a pink board. Clegg comes in and stands over a green flower-shaped table and begins talking to two pre-selected reporters from the local press.

I just stare at him: he has a shaving rash, and at the corner of his ears white and grey hairs are sprouting. His skin is reddened, but his suit is immaculate. Seven minutes in and he is gone, whisked back to his bus.

Clegg never leaves the bubble.

The Lib-Dems tell me if I want to talk to him I have to drive north, four hours north, to the rundown town of Stockport near Manchester. The Lib-Dem battle bus bleeps out. Clegg conducted no walkabout, to my knowledge.

In reality, he never came to Chippenham.

***

I step out of the bubble, head to a busy street, and approach about 50 people with my notebook. I ask: What is your reaction, in one word, when I say Nick Clegg?

Standing outside S.K. Fruits in front of the tomato trays, on The Bridge street, I count 17 negative responses. I scan through my notes: the most common response is “weak,” “knob,” or “wanker.” I find three respondents, which includes one couple in hiking gear, who chose to make a retching sound when I say Clegg’s name. I count only 5 positive words. “Fine” being two of them.

I drive north, out of Wiltshire. Tourist signs point to castles, leisure parks and stone circles, until I merge with the highway. The occasional fume-stained England flag flutters from builders’ yards. Hillocks roll into the motorway. Whitewashed farmhouses stare into the static hiss of the M-6.

I become clogged in the suburbs of Manchester and begin to panic that I will not be able to question Clegg. That I will never be able to ask him what was his great mistake, and what now is his greatest fear.

I drive under redbrick industrial arches into Stockport, as proud and as antique as a Roman aqueduct. These are the de-industrialized towns: where for two centuries, civilization was organized around factories.

I turn round huge, mostly locked-up, warehouses. Their windows sealed with steel against the tramps and Roma. They once exported six million hats a year from Stockport. Today they export none. I ask, is this what Guangzhou will feel like after 3D-printing bankrupts China’s mass production?

Hats are not the only thing in decline: Stockport has had a falling population since the 1960s. The north of England has lost almost a quarter of its share of Britain’s population since the 1970s. It has shrunk back to 1820s levels, before industrialization began.

I park in Woodley, outside a low-rise, mean concrete complex of chip shops, betting stores, and locals’ only pubs. There it is: the glowing battle bus.

I rush after Nick Clegg.

He is being accompanied into Starting Point, a community café project, where a carefully selected group of school children and supporters have been placed, in front of the pack.

I am puzzled by his statement — we were both on the same motorway and it did not look closed to me.

The black machines on journalists’ shoulders begin to click and whirr and I step, exasperatedly, outside.

A group of teenagers is loitering around. Do you know Nick Clegg is in there, I ask.

“Why didn’t they tell us…!”

“What the fuck! Can we come in!”

The boys in sportswear and shell suits rush to the door and have heads firmly shaken at then. They then move to push their faces to the glass to gawp at Clegg. “Nick Clegg doesn’t keep his promises,” says Blaide Henderson, pulling up his bike to full height. “I want to ask him why he said he was against the Tories, but then he became a Tory. Why did he become like them, mate?”

A dark blonde, blue-eyed boy pushes to the front, clearly a leader. His name is Layal Khalil, and he tells me his father is a Palestinian car salesman.

“Why did Nick Clegg lie to my brother,” he says. “Why did he lie to him that he would stop the uni’ fees and then he pushed ‘em up? Why does he think we’ll believe a word he says again?”

“He’s only here for the votes,” says Blaide. “He’s only thinking about the votes, because that’s the money.”

The matrix is breaking down. The boys are rapping on the window. There are now seven of them in sportswear. The scene is approaching Dickensian ridicule: the chosen ones, in their uniforms, sit with Clegg to be elevated. The kids on the street are shut out. A Lib-Dem official rushes outside and sits on a metal chair outside to block the teens access to the window closest to Clegg. More bikes are incoming.

My eyes focus again on the deputy prime minister. Layal gestures to me through the window. Two police cars have drawn up. I rush outside and intercept a strikingly muscular, tattooed, green-eyed policeman.

Did they call you?

The policeman tells me: “That’s none of your business.” Then, with a colleague, he begins taking the kids names.

I step inside, and after what cannot be more than 30 minutes, the bubble is moving on. This is my chance. I move up to Nick Clegg armed with my iPhone as a recorder.

His eyes are bloodshot.

How does it feel to be the kingmaker, I ask. Clegg’s face laughs, booming, satisfied.

“Why don’t we wait until the public has had its say next Thursday,” says Clegg.

This is my chance.

The public have lost faith in the establishment, I say, because of Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, expenses, banking bailouts, and pedophile cover-ups, and they want proof they can trust politicians again. What are you offering?

“Well I accept your challenge,” says Clegg, “that given no one is going to win an election all the politicians, all parties have got to be even clearer about the kind of things they just won’t compromise on, at all, under any circumstances, I accept that. And of course we’ve learnt the heard way as a party, about when you can’t put something into practice, clearly, you’ve wanted to… And so I this week have been setting out the kind of red-lines, for the Liberal Democrats, I’ve said that we will not enter into a coalition government of any description, if the Labour and Tory parties insist on their cuts, on nurseries, and colleges, and schools, I’ve said that we won’t, we won’t enter into any coalition under any description.”

I think Nick Clegg might have misunderstood my question. And I cut him off, saying — its more than that.

“No I don’t agree with you,” says Clegg. “I think what you need to do is show at a time when there’s a great deal of fragmentation and fluidity in British politics, and when no one is going to win outright, that there are certain fixed points which people can hold onto. I think that’s a very big point actually. But you provide those points through concrete things.”

I stare at him intently as he talks. Clegg makes no eye contact and looks past me. The blue in his eye seems to have faded. He looks exhausted, stressed — his brow furrows, as if running off caffeine, or nerves.

“We won’t,” says Clegg, “y’know I speak for my own party, others will speak for their own parties, for themselves… But its’… we won’t go into any coalition which involves Labour or Conservative cuts on the scale they’re planning in education. We won’t go into a coalition unless there is an early stability budget to make sure we keep the economy on the straight and narrow. We won’t go into any coalition unless we can give tax cuts to people by raising the point at which you start paying income tax.”

I realize Clegg is not looking at me, but at some fixed point over my shoulder. He is not talking to me either. These are mentally recorded statements, not answers. I wonder if the latest poll by Lord Ashcroft’s research agency is disturbing him: two percent behind Labour’s candidate in his constituency in Sheffield.

So what happens if you lose your seat?

“Well I don’t intend to lose my seat.”

But what happens if you do.

“Well I’m not going to.”

And what happens in the eventuality that you might?

Asking the question a third time, throws him.

“But… I’m… I’m… I’m a campaigning politician,” says Clegg, “I’m not a soothsayer. I’m, I’m not going into a ‘what if’ game, I have, I’ve, I’ve, I’m very confident, not complacent, I’m very confident… I will win my seat.”

So what was your biggest mistake?

Now Clegg’s robotic verbosity is playing again.

“Well obviously and of course most notoriously,” says Clegg, “is the fact we left a lot of people disappointed on the issue of tuition fees. I think, more generally, what I’ve learnt from that episode is that if you are having to take very difficult decisions, which are entirely beyond your control, and in that case we were between a rock and hard place, in the wake of the biggest financial crisis our country has seen since the Second World War.”

I try parsing that in my head. The kids are still gawping in the window.

“I think more generally what I’ve learnt from that episode,” says Clegg,” is that you’ve got to spend a lot of time explaining what the problem is, before you tell people what the solution is. I think people are perfectly reasonable about difficult and even unpopular decisions, if they know why you’re doing it. I think at the beginning of the government a lot of these decisions took place very quickly, and on the hoof, and then people went, ‘hang on a minute, why are you doing that?’ And I don’t think we’d spend enough time explaining to people what the vice-like dilemma was Britain faced.”

A Lib-Dem official is gesturing me: time up, finish.

And what’s your biggest fear?

“Oh, I think there’s now a very real sort of… a very real choice… and I think this general election probably has more at stake in it than any other general election possibly since, y’know, the 1979 general election. One of these very big, y’know, direction-changing…”

The deputy prime minister sounds apocalyptic.

“I think the big choice really is between the potential chaos and instability and shambles… of a right-wing alliance in which a sort of minority Conservative administration is held hostage by UKIP and by the right-wing Conservative party… and on the other extreme and on the other side, a hapless minority-government Labour administration, dancing to the tune of Alex Salmond… I think that really, that way is the chaos of instability. And I think we need stability and I think the only way to get stability is to continue to anchor our government in the reasonable centre ground and this of course can only be done by having more Liberal Democrats in parliament.”

*****

Picture: Ben Judah

Drained by Clegg, I step outside. The two smartest boys follow me to the roadside.

“Did you ask Clegg why he doesn’t keep his promises?” says Layal. “Did you ask Clegg why he became a Tory?” says Blaide.

I walk around the block, past the orange, Martian, presence of Clegg’s glowing battle bus, looking for a pint. I step inside the Woodley Arms, a minute away. This is the way a pub should be: dirty, patterned carpets and lonely men, daydreaming into football.

Anyone know Nick Clegg is next door?

There is shock, anger, and confusion in the Woodley Arms.

“It’s a fake,” says John Smith, a jowly rotund, old man, with wispy gray hair, “It’s a fucking fake. He didn’t come to Woodley unless he came and spoke to the real people of Woodley… He’s a fucking liar.”

Smith is emigrating.

“My daughter is in Australia. There’s no country left. There used to a foundry here… an enormous foundry. That was my country. Now it’s gone.”

I step outside, less than a hour since I met Nick Clegg. The light has faded to a sheen of blue. One by one, the streetlamps clack on, the shops are shuttered, and the battle bus has gone.

This article is part of the POLITICO Road trip series, to read the rest click here.

Related stories on these topics:

hlebfrozenover

I sympathise with the journo’s thankless task of following a doomed campaign around, but this article has the feeling of utter pessimism even before meeting Clegg. Reminds me of post match interviews with a soon to be sacked football manager, where the questioner only wants to hear if the chairman has given “assurances”. This only serves to increase the ridiculousness of the campaign trail that the journalist is trying to illuminate.

Posted on 5/2/15 | 9:21 AM CEST

Jack

Good read. Interesting election.

Posted on 5/2/15 | 3:37 PM CEST

jpand

Very enjoyable piece, thanks.

Posted on 5/3/15 | 5:44 AM CEST

sylvain

In order to be successful a liberal party has to represent a center left position.

Posted on 5/3/15 | 10:02 AM CEST

Jon Cloke

Good, visceral piece of journalistic commentary – well done! Nick Clegg will soon be resigning his post as Lib Dem ‘leader’ to spend more time with David Cameron’s family…

Elections in the UK: This is not an election: this is a fake charade being sold as democracy at work.

Posted on 5/4/15 | 2:58 PM CEST

naila

i love this article!! you have a great style. keep it up

Posted on 5/4/15 | 4:39 PM CEST

WHS

I am a Tory, and one who has become increasing frustrated with the Lib Dem attitude to the coalition which is not “Look what we Lib Dems have achieved!” but more and more “Look what we’ve stopped those terrible Tories (our coalition partners, not that we’ll mention it) doing!”, a hopelessly negative attitude out of place in any coalition of whatever party – and I don’t just say it because my party is on the receiving end of this stuff.

All the same this article is a needless hatchet job on Clegg. All leading politicians do this scuttling about at election time, in the UK and in the US. Even the supposed great populist Farage does it.